White
by grumkinsnark
Summary: White, as in picket fences or salt lines.


Story inspired by the sharp_teeth LJ meme prompt in the summary (which…oddly doesn't seem to be there anymore, but it used to be, I swear!). Also, if you're looking for a happy story, it be not here. Just warning you.

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**White

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When he was little, Mary would always talk about what Dean would have, what Dean would do, when he was older. She would talk in grand descriptions of Dean in a happy home, with whitewashed walls and a deck he built, and a picket fence that surrounded the whole yard. Low enough to be inviting, but high enough to keep the dog from jumping over. He would fall in love, would get married, have a pretty and kind wife, a prancing little girl. (A football-playing boy, John would sometimes whisper.)

And Sammy. Well, Sammy would be right next door—"My boys, my boys must stick together, Dean, remember that for Mama."—with a wife of his own, a dog—"A big one, Mama! 'Cause Sammy's gonna be big and strong, right?"—and a coupla kids. Maybe a picket fence, too. Or not. Dean didn't know. He wanted to wait to see what Sammy liked.

And Mary and John would live long lives, spoiling their grandchildren rotten, reminding their boys to be the good sons they raised. And they'd keep their own picket fence, no matter how many times John claimed that it was tacky, too Norman Rockwell, that it was too much upkeep.

When Mary died in the fire that Dean didn't know the cause of until years and years later, he kept replaying her tales in his mind. He was mute for a long time, long enough for John to worry, but it wasn't because he was depressed or traumatized, like he heard John talking to Uncle Bobby about. It was because he wanted to preserve Mary's voice, preserve her memory. He was four, and he knew he couldn't remember things as well as John, and so he thought that if he concentrated only on her voice for a long while, he could remember.

And he did. For the most part.

It's such a mundane thing that makes him pause. He's in his twenties, and he's laying down a salt line. A task so simple a preschooler could do it, a task he'd been doing since late in that fateful November of 1983.

He doesn't know why he paused, not until that night when Sam's asleep in the other bed, lightly snoring, but he can't get to sleep because there's a _damn fucking train_ right outside the motel.

So he does what he would always do when he couldn't sleep: he closed his eyes, blocked out as much of that _damn fucking train_ as he could, and envisioned Mary. Envisioned her soft face, tumbling gold hair, eyes that were his shining back at him, a glorious smile that made him do the same.

"Dean," she'd start in his memory, the name falling from her lips so full of love it makes Dean's heart ache. "You're little now, but do you want to hear a story?"

"Yes, Mama," Dean remembers himself saying. "Can Sammy hear it, too?"

Mary laughs, a sound Dean also remembers clear as day. "Of course, sweetheart," she says, and lays Sam in Dean's lap as she holds him in her own. She kisses the top of his head and smiles. "When you're older, when you're tall and strong like your daddy, you're going to have a beautiful life, Dean…"

Dean recites it in his head and on his lips soundlessly, practically feeling Mary say it to him, feel her hands idly stroking his hair. "—and it's going to have a white salt—"

Dean's eyes fly open, pupils dilating in the blackness of the motel room. He frowns, not knowing what happened. That…wasn't right. It wasn't. She was supposed to say "a white picket fence," not…not _that_.

Swallowing, Dean closes his eyes again, and starts over. Mary's soothing voice soon calms him, and he hears himself asking her if Sam can hear the story, too. She runs through her ideality, and puts pretty pictures in young Dean's head that will carry over decades later.

"—and it's going to have a white salt line in front of every door that will keep out—"

"No," Dean says aloud, eyes wide open again. He whispers to the dark shadows, "No. That's not what she said."

Sam stirs, mumbling a little and turning over at the noise. Dean waits a few seconds for Sam to fall back into slumber, and then tries again. It takes a little longer to relax this time, but when she gets to the part of him falling in love, he settles down, lets himself unwind by the sound of her voice.

"—and it's going to have a white salt line in front of every door that will keep out the demons, but you don't know if they will leave you alive or—"

"No!" Dean yells, sitting up in bed. "No…"

Sam does wake now, Dean's shout enough to pull him from sleep. "Dean?" he asks into the black blearily. "Y'alrigh'?"

Dean squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. "'M fine, Sammy," he says. _I'm not...she didn't SAY that!_ "Go back to sleep."

"Sure?" Sam asks, already falling back onto the pillows.

"Yeah."

"Mmkay," Sam mumbles, and in a couple seconds, he's down for the count again, his limbs splayed ungracefully.

Dean swallows again and gets out from under the covers, pulling on some jeans, a sweatshirt, and his boots. He walks out of the motel silently, heading towards his car, the Impala shining a dim blue in the moonlight.

He climbs up onto the roof of her, exhaling and watching his breath condense in the air. He almost wants to try again, would be willing to sleep out in the thirty-something-degree weather if her tale would sort itself right in his brain, but has a feeling in the pit of his stomach akin to being stabbed there that it won't.

And he wonders. Wonders when it changed, when the story altered.

When it changed from picket fences and a smiling wife to salt lines and a life on the run.

When it changed from Sammy living next door with his own family and John and Mary coming over for Thanksgiving and Christmas to him having to fight tooth and nail to get Sam to just _stay_, and for beer can wreath holidays.

When it changed from a picture-perfect, yet attainable, vision to a hellish reality complete with, well, Hell.

He wants to blame it on John. Wants to blame it on his father who was never really a father, a man who only cared about the hunt and of who killed Mary. Which, while a noble cause—Dean'll concede that much—and while he did love his sons—Dean'll concede that, too—wasn't enough. He had two young boys, one that had to take care of the other without a dad's help. So yeah, he'd like to blame it on John for fucking up their lives.

But he can't, not really. After all, as far as Dean can tell, John was just doing his best.

He wants to blame it on the life. On hunting. On how the endless knowledge of what to do if this or that comes a'knocking (well, not many would knock; more likely, they'd just tear down the door), or of what kind of bullet one should use in a gun, or of where's best to keep the salt.

Because salt lines keep evil out, don't you know?

Dean has a forever-long list of people or things he could blame, but he knows he can't. There's only one person he can blame it on: himself.

After all, no one except Mary had described to him the life he could have; it isn't like John told Dean he couldn't have one. He never said he could, either, but the possibility was technically there. Hell, Sam had gone and made one of his own. Sure, that ended up worse than either brother had thought possible, but Sam had _tried_. Had been successful, for a while.

Which means that it was Dean's subconscious and inner desire to give up on that Norman Rockwell dream, to delve fully and completely into the hunting life. (Right?)

Dean presses his fingers to his closed eyelids hard enough so he sees spots, in an effort to get his thoughts to stop moving around so quickly.

He opens them slowly and looks at the stars, little balls of light posing innocently in the sky. He feels his chest burn with emptiness as he realizes:

The white picket fences didn't _change into_ white salt lines. They simply weren't there in the first place. In fact, he doesn't think Mary told him the stories after all. It was just a part of his mentality that wanted to believe that at one point he was innocent, had a real future. He doesn't doubt Mary told him and Sam some tales, but they were just bedtime stories. Plain old fairy tales of knights in shining armor and magic swords killing dragons.

But no white picket fences, no barking dog, no wife or bouncing baby.

Just salt, and ammo, and scams, and monsters.

Dean scoffs at himself. Picket fences? Yeah, like he's _that_ kind of guy.

When he wakes in the morning, covered in dew after having fallen asleep on the Impala's hood and finding Sam jostling him, a cup of coffee in his hand, he forgets all about the night before. And that evening, and every evening thereafter, he dreams not of picket fences, nor of salt lines for that matter.

He dreams of nothing at all.


End file.
